LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

Even last-minute improvised emergency lighting couldn’t dim the opening night excitement at Altadena Music Theatre’s all-around fabulous open-air revival of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s Little Shop Of Horrors.
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AUGUST WILSON’S MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM

My mind may have wandered during the second half of Act One of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, but when all is said and done, it’s a pretty darn spectacular season opener for A Noise Within.
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PERICLES


Ten strangers seeking refuge from a storm in a disaster relief center find much in common with their displaced Shakespearean counterparts in Boston Court Pasadena’s thrillingly inventive staging of Ellen McLaughlin’s modern verse translation of Pericles.
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CONSCIENCE


Decades before lies, chaos, fear, personal attacks, intimidation, and bullying reigned supreme in Washington DC, a senator named Joseph McCarthy set it all in motion by waging war against suspected communists and Senator Margaret Chase Smith in Conscience, Joe DiPietro’s fascinating look back at how much times haven’t changed since 1950.
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GREEN CORRIDORS

Natalka Vorozhbyt’s Green Corridors, a series of vignettes revolving around four Ukrainian women fleeing their war-torn land, works better as a showcase for City Garage’s unique style and sensibility than as a play for those who prefer more traditional linear realism to existential dreamscape theater.
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ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE


Tests that reveal contaminated water in the local hot springs pose an existential threat to townspeople whose livelihoods depend on tourist dollars in Bart DeLorenzo’s electrifying contemporary adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s ahead-of-its-times 1882 shocker Enemy Of The People.
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TREASURE ISLAND

Dialog scenes get bogged down in nautical jargon, 18th-century slang, and outdated grammar, much of it unintelligible to 21st-century ears, but whenever action sequences take over, Theatricum Botanicum audiences are treated to the swashbucklingest adventure story ever to unfold under Topanga skies.
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WAITING IN THE WINGS


Dames don’t get any grander than the grandes dames taking centerstage at Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Waiting In The Wings, Noël Coward’s charming 1960 salute to actresses of a certain age who’ve still got it in them to hold an audience spellbound.
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